Preface

Welcome to Volume 9 of Advances in Global Leadership (AGL). We bid a reluctant farewell to co-editor Ying Wang of the University of Western Australia in Perth in 2014. Ying co-edited Volumes 5–8 with founding senior editor Bill Mobley, an enormous contribution. She played an integral role in making Volume 8 one of four finalists for the University of San Diego’s 2014 Outstanding Leadership Book, winning honorable mention for “scholarly rigor and critical thinking.” Lily (Ming) and I greatly missed Ying’s good cheer and expertise while preparing this volume. We were pleased, however, to welcome aboard Mark Mendenhall of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. As one of the most prolific and profound global leadership scholars, Mark’s research has truly advanced the field. We suspected that his strategic eye for seeing where the field needs to expand next would come in handy on the editorial team – and so it has.

AGL continues to be a unique outlet for scholars. In addition to high-quality empirical research, it also welcomes well-crafted essays and innovative conceptual work and research. Given its designation as both a book and a journal, authors have the luxury of space to fully present their thinking and results without the page constraints found in most journals.

The goal of the series is captured in its title: specifically, to advance the definition, conceptualization, and understanding of global leadership processes, and the development of global leaders. If you are a long-time reader, you know that the series previously defined global leadership in a broad fashion and solicited a wide variety of global topics related to various types of international, comparative, and global leadership. We gambled in Volume 8 that the field of global leadership had grown and matured to the point where we could focus the series a bit more narrowly on the emerging global leadership construct and closely related topics. To avoid confusion with the fields of comparative leadership and global management, we used these global leadership and global leader definitions in the call for contributions to Volumes 8 and 9.

The process of influencing the thinking, attitudes and behaviors of a global community to work together synergistically toward a common vision and common goals. (Adler, 2001; Festing, 2001)

People who inspire followers from multiple cultures to willingly pursue a positive vision in a context characterized by significant levels of complexity, flow and geographical presence. (Adapted from Mendenhall, Reiche, Bird, & Osland, 2012)

I’m happy to report that our gamble to narrow the global leadership scope of the series has paid off. The number of publications in the field of global leadership has grown exponentially in recent years, as you will see in the final chapter in this volume. We are very proud of the selections in this volume and hope that you find them as provocative and useful as we did.

Many people made important contributions to this volume who deserve our thanks and recognition. We are grateful to Martyn Lawrence, Publisher at Emerald Group Publishing Inc. for his vision and support, and to his entire production team. We also want to recognize Jeanne McNett who served as a writing coach on several chapters.

This volume would not have been possible without the funding I received from the Donald and Sally Lucas Family Foundation to the Global Leadership Advancement Center (GLAC), which is housed in the School of Global Innovation & Leadership at San Jose State University. I also extend my thanks to Deans David Steele and Marlene Turner, Director Taeho Park, Asbjorn Osland, Prabha Chandrasekar, Stephanie Romero, Christine Huynh, and Kelly Quach at the Lucas Graduate School and College of Business and to GLAC staff Pamela Wells, Anu Sairaj, Carmen Pan, Attri Farahzadi, Andrea Sanchez, and Helene Fjagesund. Katarina Schulz merits special recognition for her role during the final throes of manuscript preparation.

Ming Li acknowledges Hull University Business School for supporting her research. Mark Mendenhall is grateful for the support of the College of Business and the J. Burton Frierson Chair of Excellence in Business Leadership at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.

Research volumes like this one are seldom birthed without the support and sacrifice of the authors’ families. This volume is dedicated with special gratitude to them:

• Joyce: Asbjorn, Jessica, Joe, Zoe, Lucy, Michael, Anna, Jacob, Gavin, Katrina, Scott, Isabelle, Ellie, and Charlie

• Ming: Riqian, Jingkun, Menyi, Cheng, Meihua, Jinlin, and Qiuming

• Mark: Janet, Tony, Clarisse, Nicole, Bryan, Alexis, and Zachary